Co-creating Organizational Vitality and Individual Fulfilment

The salient organizational development challenge in modern times is that of building a highly engaged workforce that is committed, productive and innovative.

Employees wish to give their very best at work. Organizations also make every effort to provide an atmosphere where people can do their best. However, despite intensive efforts from both sides, engagement still remains elusive.

This book emphasizes the role that the employee and the institution need to play, in order to make people engagement possible. It spells out a novel engagement paradigm that starts from the fundamentals i.e. the intrinsic nature of the human being and the basic nature of organizational work in modern society.

The text goes on to identify an appreciative culture and a holistic structure as the two foundational pillars that support people engagement in organizations. The engagement capabilities that are required for fulfilling the responsibilities at each organizational level are then articulated in great detail.

Through numerous originally developed process frameworks, accompanied by several comprehensive organizational case studies drawn from across the world, the book illustrates how people engagement actually happens in practice. The goal is to show how organizational vitality may be seamlessly created alongside individual fulfillment.

Foreword by Dr Rajiv Kumar

Preface

Acknowledgements

PART I: THE QUEST

The Engaged Organization

Case Study: Patagonia

The Engagement Imperative

PART II: THE FOUNDATIONS

The Individual Human Being

The Nature of Work

PART III: THE APPROACH

The Appreciative Culture

Case Study: The Tata Group

The Holistic Structure

Case Study: Whole Foods Market

PART IV: THE ARCHITECTURE

Individual Excellence

Case Study: Apple Inc.

Supervisory Acumen

Case Study: Narayana Health

Managerial Efficacy

Case Study: The Aravind Eye Care System

Entrepreneurial Synergy

Case Study: Interface Inc.

Transformational Leadership

Case Study: ITC Limited

Mentorship Mastery

Case Study: Jaipur Rugs

Epilogue

A practical account of how to solve a vexing problem, viz. that of building engaged employees. This is a different kind of book that could change the approach to the issue of people engagement. Certainly worth the time and the price.

R. Gopalakrishnan,

CEO, The Mindworks

For sustained business outperformance in the ‘new normal’, it is vital that we create an organizational culture which unleashes the human potential.

A critical determinant will be the level of employee engagement, and Dr Maheshwari does an excellent job of exploring employee engagement through a multidimensional and holistic lens. Readers will get an in-depth understanding of the seven accountability levels and the challenges posed at each level.

Be it a small-team leader or a C-level executive, all will be able to relate to this book and use the learnings to shift their performance to the ‘next orbit’.

Rajeev Dubey,

Group President (HR and Corporate Services) and CEO (After-Market Sector), Member of the Group Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra Ltd

Engage! vividly brings out the fact that while organizations are built mostly for economic value creation, they thrive only when the human ‘spirit’ is deeply engaged towards the fulfilment of the institutional purpose and objectives. A beautiful blend of logic and creativity, it delineates how the role holders at every accountability level must carry out their respective mandates in an appreciative cultural milieu. All this adds up creating a ‘perfectly engaged organization’.

This text captures the best of Western as well as Indian philosophy of development in order to create an impeccable engagement paradigm. It brings out the true essence of a Sanskrit shloka which means that there is no alphabet without meaning; no root without medicinal property; no person without ability. But rare is the manager or leader who can connect, organize and utilize immense human potential so as to harness latent human talent towards the creation of ‘individual and organizational excellence’.

D. V. Shastry,

Director (Personnel), Electronics Corporation of India Ltd

The book offers a novel vision to all individuals. In a world where being part of an organization is easy, but feeling like one is hard, it helps us to understand how the most benevolent organizations have the most engaged employees and self-fulfilled individuals. The book puts the idea of engagement as well as individual aims, wishes and health at the same level and gives insights on how both can be achieved simultaneously. The author never digresses from his objective and takes the readers step by step to the making of an engaged organization.

Navneet Saluja,

Managing Director, GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare Ltd

‘Employees are nurtured by an appreciative culture that is deeply informed by the highest aspirations of human nature’, as Dr Maheshwari rightly mentions in this book, is one of the essential takeaways for all the CEOs and CXOs who want to build ideal organizations. The book provides frameworks to architect an engaged organization without being preachy. Through well-researched case studies, Sunil brings life to his main theory that appreciative culture and holistic structure are the main pillars of an ideal, engaged organization. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to understand how organizations excel.

Professor Debashis Chatterjee,

Author of Timeless Leadership

Key features

• The book presents detailed case studies of the organizations that have learnt to successfully engage with their employees.

• Describes how role holders at all levels of an engaged organization carry out their respective duties.

• It provides a dialectic balance between the conceptual and the pragmatic facets of organizational development.

Available formats

ISBN: 9789353282714

Paperback

Suggested Retail Price: $27.99

Bookstore Price: $22.39

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